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Darpa's Tiny Lasers Will Soon Hunt for Biochemical Weapons

The Joint Biological Stand-Off Detection System (JBSDS) is an example of stand-off chemical and biological threat detection too large for today's needs, says Darpa.

Image: Darpa

The Pentagon learned in August 2013 – when the U.S. came close to striking Syria over the Assad regime's use of sarin gas – that it was woefully unprepared to face chemical or biological weapons on the battlefield.

Now Darpa thinks it has a solution, called the Laser UV Sources for Tactical Efficient Raman program, or LUSTER. The Defense Department's research arm announced this week it would begin developing a small-scale, portable and budget-conscious detection system that will rely on high power and efficient ultraviolet lasers.

Darpa says the military already has the technology to detect and identify chemical and biological weapons, but that it's too expensive, too big and too limited in its functionality to be truly effective in the scenarios the military now envisions when it comes to chemical and biological threats.

“Today’s standoff detection systems are so large and heavy that trucks are required to move them,” said Dan Green, Darpa program manager, in a statement. “LUSTER seeks to develop new laser sources for breakthrough chemical and biological agent detection systems that are compact and light enough to be carried by an individual, while being more efficient than today’s systems.”

“We also want to take a couple of zeroes off the price tag,” he added.

The military has struggled with its approach on how to handle the potential threat of chemical weapons, even though it had spent significant resources on the matter immediately after 9/11.

During the Syrian crisis, the Pentagon couldn't muster the confidence to put to use so-called Agent Defeat weapons — warheads meant to destroy chemical weapons without dispersing them — despite spending tens of millions of dollars on their development.

Testifying before the Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee in October, a group of unconventional weapons experts warned of the decline of attention paid to biochemical threats.

“What we need is more conversations like this going on, but I don’t see those going on,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. “We need to raise the consciousness.”

The panel pointed to the use of chemical and biological weapons by Syria and Iraq, as well as the stockpiles believed to exist in countries like North Korea. They warned about the potential for the transferring of those weapons should they fall into the wrong hands among those relatively unstable countries and the potential for U.S. servicemembers to face them on the battlefield.